


sometimes it takes dark (to feel a little light)

by ohallows



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bonding, Comfort, Family, Gen, Panic Attacks, Platonic Soulmates, happy bday emlias!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22444864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: Four times Zolf and Sasha took care of one another.
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Comments: 23
Kudos: 78





	sometimes it takes dark (to feel a little light)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butchlesbianartemis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butchlesbianartemis/gifts).



> happy birth emlias ur wonderful and i love u i hope u enjoy 
> 
> this is… vaguely set in this au universe i have in my head where sasha is a white hat hacker bc someone in the podcast made a joke about it and i’ve literally been thinking about it for weeks. maybe i’ll write something for it. who knows

_ “So, still on for dinner next week?”  _ Feryn asks, playing with the cord on his headphones as he rests his head on his hands, staring at the screen.

Zolf stretches in his desk chair, tapping the volume button on his laptop. “Yeah, that works. Sasha should be back in time, but it depends on how long this job takes.”

Feryn laughs, sounding a bit distorted over Zolf’s relatively cheap laptop speakers.  _ “It’s Sasha. How long could it take? She’ll be back.” _

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” Zolf says, chuckling. “It’ll be fun. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

_ “We’ve left it too long, yeah. Been busy.” _

“You’ve got a lot to catch me up on,” Zolf says, and Feryn laughs. 

_ “Trust me, Zolf, mining won’t have gotten more interesting to you since you left. I want to know what my baby brother’s been up to in the big city and if he’s coming home for Hannukah.” _

Zolf laughs. Feryn’s been on him about coming home for months now, never mind that it’s only July. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back for a weekend. Can’t get too much time off from the hospital, sorry.”

_ “Well, I can't get mad at you for leaving me hanging when you’re out there saving lives. It’d be kind of a dick move, yeah?”  _

“And that’d be different from how you usually act how, exactly?” Zolf mutters, making sure it's loud enough for Feryn to hear. 

_ “Hey!” _ Feryn accuses, tossing a balled-up piece of paper at his own laptop camera.  _ “It’s a genetic condition. Being an arse.” _

“Glad it skipped me, then,” Zolf teases. 

_ “You wish it did, dick,” _ Feryn grouses, but he’s laughing too.  _ “Anyway, what else is going on? Work good?”  _

“It’s been a bit crazy, but...” Zolf trails off, glancing over at his door. He can still see the light on under the door and frowns. It’s nearly midnight; Sasha shouldn’t still be up, not when she's got a flight at nine the next morning. 

“ _ Zolf? What’s wrong?”  _ Feryn asks, looking concerned.

“Oh, sorry, Feryn, it’s - Sasha’s still up, I thought she went to bed hours ago. Er - give me a minute?”

Feryn nods. “ _ Yeah, go ahead, mate. Tell her that her favorite Smith brother wants her to get some rest.” _

Zolf rolls his eyes. “Please, I’m the favorite, you’re just jealous. Be back in a minute.” Feryn gives him an exaggerated two-fingered salute and Zolf sniggers before pulling his headphones off. He pushes the chair back from the desk and heads over to the door, hoping Sasha had just forgotten to turn the light off when she’d gone to bed. 

No such luck; as he gets into the main room he sees Sasha sitting on the couch, papers spread out around her on the cushions and piling up on the coffee table. She’s writing something down on one of the sheets, tongue poking slightly out from between her lips as she focuses. 

“All right, Sasha?” Zolf asks, leaning against the wall as he watches her. Sasha doesn’t jump - not like he ever thought she would - but she does look up at him and give him a nod before going back to the papers. “Still up?”

“Yeah,” she says, more tense than Zolf had expected her to be. “Need to figure out this last part of this job. Got a bit of a last-minute change, need to re-evaluate.”

Zolf nods, standing there and not saying anything. The flat is pretty silent, save for the scratching of Sasha’s pencil and the slow, steady ticking of the clock. She heaves a sigh and crumples up the paper she’s been writing on, tossing it over her shoulder. Zolf follows the arc of the paper; it lands perfectly with a few other pieces of paper, and Zolf steps over to them, picking one up and unfolding it.

Sasha’s handwriting is small and spiky, and barely legible even if she didn’t instinctively write in a shorthand only she could understand. It looks like she’s scribbling over plans of a security system, way more advanced than Zolf could ever comprehend. Most of it seems to be redacted, anyway, but he knows Sasha’s done much more with much less. Still, he can sense the stress coming off of her. 

“Worried about tomorrow?”

Sasha shakes her head. “Grizzop noticed a new aspect of their system that we hadn’t planned for. It’s going to make breaking in a lot more difficult than we thought, but we can’t push the time, so it’s a bit last-ditch.”

“Ah. Well. Want some tea?” Zolf asks. Sasha shrugs, still scribbling away, and Zolf decides to interpret it as a yes. He pulls out his phone and shoots Feryn a quick text, letting him know that this is going to be a lot longer than he thought, and gets a thumbs up emoji back. 

The kitchen is still dark, but Zolf knows his way around well enough. He grabs the kettle and fills it up, setting it down on the stove and letting it start to heat. There are two mugs drying next to the sink, so Zolf grabs those as well and some tea bags from the cabinet. It doesn’t take long before the kettle is whistling, and Zolf carefully pours it over two teabags in the mugs. 

He carries them into the room, handing one over to Sasha and joining her, sitting down on a chair across from her. 

“Cheers, boss,” Sasha says, taking a sip and wincing.

“Yeah, er, still hot,” Zolf says, and Sasha nods. 

“Mmmm, got that, thanks.”

Zolf laughs a bit at that, quiet, and Sasha rolls her eyes, muttering something that he can’t make out. They lapse into silence again, Zolf carefully blowing on his tea and giving it a minute to cool before taking a sip. 

They don’t always need to talk, is the thing. Sometimes it’s enough to just be together, sitting in the silence. They both learned this within a few months of living together, when Sasha was having a terrible day and anything Zolf said just set her more on edge. So he hadn’t said anything, just sat there and been a silent comfort, and it had helped more than speaking ever would have.

It worked back then, and it works now. The room is quiet, save for the intermittent sipping of tea and scribble of Sasha’s pencil against the plans. The clock ticks by slowly, moving ever closer to midnight, and Sasha still doesn’t look any closer to having figured it out. Zolf already knows there isn’t a way he can feasibly help; he’s alright with tech, and a decent strategist at that, but this entire situation is so far above his pay grade that he wouldn’t even be able to make an attempt. Sasha’s getting a bit more frazzled as the night wears on, hair sticking up straighter as she keeps unconsciously rubbing her hands through it and tugging on it. 

Zolf rests his eyes, mug delicately balanced on his thigh, and dozes a bit. The clock strikes midnight again, bells ringing throughout the flat, and Zolf yawns. He’s content to just sit there, listening to the sounds of the flat and of Sasha’s pencil scratching across the paper, but if he falls asleep on the chair his neck will never forgive him for it. He finishes his tea and sets the mug down gently on the table. He leans back and stretches, popping his shoulders. 

“Don’t stay up too late, yeah?” Zolf says, glancing over at Sasha. “And set your alarm. Your train leaves at six.”

Sasha doesn’t glance up, giving a short nod. She shivers a bit and Zolf stands there, considering. He grabs a blanket off of a nearby chair and walks over, tossing it around Sasha’s shoulders after making sure she’s had enough time to see him coming.

“Thanks, Zolf,” Sasha mumbles, looking up at him through her dark fringe. Zolf can’t see a hint of a smile on her face, and is too tired to pretend it doesn’t make him smile too. She pulls the blanket tighter around herself, hunched over the plans. 

“Don’t mention it, Sasha,” Zolf says back, and then gives her a bit of a wave as he heads back to his room. “Have a good flight and, er - text me when you get there?” Sasha just raises an eyebrow at him. “Or at least tell Grizzop and Brock I say hello.”

Sasha nods. “Can do, boss.”

Zolf nods at her and then shuts the door to his room, hoping that she gets to sleep at least sometime soon. He sits on the edge of the bed and takes his prosthetic off before laying back on the bed and shuffling into a more comfortable position. He chews on his lip for a minute and then sighs, setting an alarm for an hour before Sasha has to leave, just in case. This way, he can see her off and make sure she gets in on time. 

She’d do the same for him, anyway. 

—

Zolf can’t stop shaking. The room around him is dark and quiet and he can’t really… feel the things around him. Everything seems off, shifted an inch to the left,  _ wrong,  _ somehow. He wraps his arms around his legs and leans back against the wall before dropping his head onto his knees. The wall is cold behind his back, spreading through his thin t-shirt, and he doesn’t know what to  _ do.  _

He’d felt the panic attack coming on all day. It’s one of those  _ things _ , where he’s sitting there and sitting there and  _ sitting there  _ and the panic is just slowly spreading like fire through his veins, but he doesn’t have time to stop and deal with it and so he gets home and just  _ crashes  _ to the floor in his room and everything is so  _ much  _ and -

Everything is Zolf’s fault. The little girl with the broken arm who wouldn’t stop crying. The old woman who only had a few days left to live. Hell, the dishes in the  _ sink _ that he hasn’t had half a mind to wash for a few days now, it all - it’s all just piling, piling up on his shoulders until he feels the weight pulling at him, dragging him into the ground. And there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can  _ try _ to help, and he feels paralyzed, sitting here,  _ useless _ , and - and -

_ Fuck.  _ Everything is too loud and too quiet all at once, and he covers his ears with his hands as he tries not to completely go to pieces, but his breath is starting to speed up as he - 

He pulls his phone out and has enough presence of mind left to text a quick SOS to Sasha. (This is a system they set up, gods, years ago - anytime one of them really needs help that they can’t verbalize, they just need to send that message to the other and they’ll come as fast as they can.) His phone falls from his hands again as he shakes and squeezes his eyes shut. Time doesn’t pass normally to him, not when he’s panicking like this. The adrenaline and anxiety are spreading too quickly through his blood, faster and faster until he can barely keep up with the thoughts flashing by in his head.

_ Your fault.  _

He thinks he hears someone talk, but the panic and the stress is so  _ loud _ in his head that he can barely hear them over the roar. 

“Boss -“ he hears, and it’s garbled and distorted in his brain, and he’s trying to  _ focus _ , gods, he is, and -

“Boss.  _ Zolf.  _ I need you to listen to me, okay?” he hears, and finally opens his eyes to see Sasha crouched in front of him, looking a mix of scared and determined. He focuses on her, tries to ignore the roaring in his mind; it’s still hard to hear. Sasha signs something at him, and it takes too long for him to realize that she’s telling him

to breathe.

He does, too. She’s counting on her fingers, and he tracks it with her. In for six counts, out for six counts. It takes a while but eventually his heartbeat slows down and the thundering in his head dies down, enough so that he can hear things again, and the adrenaline has mostly bled out of his body. The panic is still there, slowly bleeding away from the edges of his being; he can feel the tear streaks on his cheek and shakily wipes them away. 

“Okay?” Sasha asks, and Zolf collapses back against the wall, breathing heavily. 

“Not really,” he says. He never is, not after one of these hits. “But better.”

Sasha scoots out and sits next to him against the wall, shoulders nearly touching as he continues to get his breathing under control. She doesn’t say anything for a minute, just sitting there, and Zolf closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the plaster as he swallows. 

“Wanna talk about it?” she asks, quiet, and Zolf shakes his head.

He really,  _ really  _ doesn’t. It’s nothing against Sasha, either, nor against talking about it, it just… it’s one of those things that if Zolf focuses on too much, he’s just gonna go right back into the spiral. He’ll save the next breakdown for his therapist’s office, where they can help him actively handle the problem and provide an objective view of the situation. He doesn’t need to dump that on Sasha, regardless of what she offers. 

Sasha doesn’t push him on it, either. She just takes the no as a no and lapses into silence, sitting there next to him.

The clock ticks by as Zolf sits there, slowly but surely pushing all of the panic away from his brain. It’s… it’s hard, really, but… well, it’s either this or slide right back down the pole into panic town, and one of those options is clearly the better one. The breathing helps, Sasha being there helps, focusing on the sound of the clock slowly ticking by helps. He finally feels himself slump a bit, tension draining out of his shoulders as he sits there.

“It was a really exhausting day,” he finally says, by way of explanation. He doesn’t expand on it, but he’s never really had to, with Sasha. 

“Yeah. Came as quick as I could when I got your message,” Sasha says, and Zolf can’t help the slight cringe he makes. “Nope. You don’t get to feel guilty about it. If I can’t feel guilty for playing that card when I thought I saw Barrett at the supermarket and couldn’t move for thirty minutes, you don’t get to feel guilty now.”

Zolf… concedes that she has a point. “Fine,” he says. He still  _ does _ feel guilty, still wishes he could just handle his damn life himself, but it’s… less now. He knows that handling it yourself isn’t always the better option, not when there are other people there to help support you. 

“Better?” Sasha asks, turning to look at him, and he mirrors her pose. It’s - it’s a hard question. His brain is still blaming him for things that he can recognize are past his control, but he can’t rationalize it to himself. But he’s not spiraling anymore, and the panic has largely drained away, leaving him exhausted.

“Yeah, I - I’m okay. Well, not really  _ okay,  _ that’s not really how these things go, and you understand that more than most, but. You know. I’ll be alright,” he says in the most roundabout way. “Thanks.”

Sasha just sits with him, for a while. They sit together in silence as the sun slowly sets outside, casting long shadows on Zolf’s floor. She’s always been good at knowing when he needs that, and he appreciates it more than he knows how to say. 

—

Zolf’s startled awake at some ungodly hour of the night by someone screaming. He shoots up in bed, blinking blearily around the room as another muffled shout echoes through the flat.  _ Sasha _ . He reaches over and starts pulling his prosthetic on, moving quicker than he normally would. It doesn’t take long before he’s stumbling down the hall; the prosthetic isn’t on perfectly, and it hurts a bit, but he needs to get down the hall and grabbing the wheelchair would take too long. 

He pushes open the room to Sasha’s room; it’s always 50/50 whether or not it’ll be locked, and he’s lucky that he must have caught her on a good day, because it’s not. Sure enough, Sasha is twisting and turning on the bed, breathing too quickly to be healthy as her fists slowly clench and unclench in the sheets. 

He knows not to wake her personally; the last time he had, she’d come up swinging with a knife clenched in her hand. Zolf had been able to dodge out of the way, and Sasha had (belatedly) warned him that her wake-ups are violent when she’s stuck in a nightmare. 

They’ve been living together long enough that Zolf’s learned tricks to get her awake without worrying about dodging a knife coming at his throat. He flips the light on and off a few times before leaving it on, and then kicks his prosthetic against the metal desk in the corner. A loud ringing sound echoes through the room and Sasha gasps, sitting up in bed with a knife clutched in her fist. She’s breathing heavily, skin glistening with sweat, hair plastered to her forehead; her eyes dart around rapidly until finally settling on Zolf, and he can see her shoulders drop with understanding. 

He doesn’t say anything, and she just lets out a loud sigh, falling back to the bed as she throws her arms over her eyes. Her hands come up soon after that, signing ‘ _ How long?’ _ to Zolf. Zolf just shrugs. After the nightmares, Sasha doesn’t like to speak. He learned BSL years ago, taking courses on it at university because he thought it would be helpful to his job. Turns out it’s mostly been helpful for communicating with Sasha when she doesn’t feel up to speaking out loud. 

“Dunno. Woke up maybe five minutes ago, didn’t take long to get you up,” Zolf says. Sasha nods, almost imperceptible, and the knife in her hand disappears… somewhere Zolf can’t see. 

_ ‘Thanks,’ _ she signs, and then her hand falls back onto the bed. Zolf leans back against the wall and waits for a moment, giving her the space she needs to calm down from the nightmare. He and Sasha are much the same, in this regard. Sometimes you just need some time to deal with it, to think it through, to pull yourself together without someone else hovering over you and trying to help. It’s always done with the best of intentions, obviously, but sometimes too much attention when your rope is already frayed enough hurts instead of helps. And Sasha, who’s made of sharp edges and dark corners, needs the space more than most.

Eventually she sits up again, leaning back against the headboard, and frowns, tilting her head back to stare up at the ceiling. Her eyes are reddened, and Zolf can see the tear tracks on her cheeks, but declines to comment, instead wordlessly grabbing the box of tissues from the nearby desk and handing them over to her. Sasha takes them and dabs around her eyes, setting them on the bed next to her and effortlessly tossing the used ones into the bin.

“Can I -“ Zolf asks, reaching out for Sasha’s shoulder, immediately dropping it as she shakes her head and flinches away. “Okay. Can you talk?”

“... Yeah,” Sasha says, hesitant. Her voice is hoarse and rough, likely rubbed raw by the screaming. She’s got a bottle of water next to her, and she reaches over, grabbing it and downing nearly half of it. It helps - her voice doesn’t sound nearly as bad as she continues. “I don’t - I don’t  _ need  _ anything, can you just. Just stay here. Please.”

Zolf settles down and sits on the edge of the bed, close enough to Sasha that she can feel his presence, but far enough away that it isn’t overbearing. “Want a distraction?” he asks, and Sasha nods emphatically, still staring almost blankly ahead. 

“When we were younger, Feryn took me down to see the ocean. He - actually, I don’t remember who’s idea was, maybe it was mine, maybe it was our father’s, I - sorry, that’s beside the point, er - well, we headed down to the beach, and there wasn’t anyone else there. It wasn’t a super popular beach, anyway, but. Feryn convinced me that he’d rented it out, and I was young enough that I believed him. Asked where he got the money and all. He said it was from his bar mitzvah, and I really thought he’d spent it all on getting this beach.” Sasha laughs a bit at that, sounding a bit more hollow than usual. 

“Well, turns out everyone had gone home early because a storm was pulling in, but Feryn and I didn’t much care for any warnings. A storm’s a storm, and we were both too young to really care about things like lightning. The storm didn’t even  _ hit _ while we were - anyway, that’s not the point. Feryn dragged me over to some tide pools and pointed out a lot of the weird creatures there. It was mostly little crabs and shellfish that had been washed ashore, nothing too fancy. Sometimes we found a sand dollar.

“Anyway, Feryn told me to look really closely at the tide pool, see if I could spot a blue starfish.” Sasha chuckles, and Zolf smiles as well. “Yeah, you see where it’s going. Well, I was maybe seven, and I  _ trusted my older brother _ . Mistake I never made again, trust me.

“So I bend down and there’s nothing in the tide pool. We wait a bit, and I start to complain about how I can’t see anything. Gods, Feryn must have been  _ waiting  _ for me to speak, because the next thing I know he’s shoving my face into the water and I’m getting a mouthful of saltwater and sand.”

Sasha laughs out loud at that, almost looking surprised herself. Zolf laughs too - it’s funny  _ now,  _ of course, but at the time he’d just screamed and waited until Feryn finally dragged him home, and didn’t stop until after his parents had chewed Feryn out. 

“I was so gullible as a kid,” he says, and Sasha snorts.

“As a kid?” she repeats, raising an eyebrow, and Zolf reaches over to grab her pillow before hitting her in the face with it.

“Oi, I’m much better now than I used to be,” he protests, and Sasha just nods. 

“Of course you are, mate,” she says, clearly placating, and Zolf hits her with the pillow again. 

“Yeah, well,  _ I’m  _ not the one who got grounded,” Zolf says, maybe a bit smugly even all these years later. Sasha laughs again, and steals the pillow from him before whacking him in the face and then tucking it behind her back. The laughs fade away to silence and Sasha swings her legs around, sitting up next to Zolf as she stares forward, still a little dead-eyed.

“Better?” Zolf asks, and this time Sasha lets him reach out to her, lets him put a hand on her shoulder. She nods. 

“A little. Mostly tired, now,” she mumbles, running a hand through her hair. “It’s always the same nightmare time after time and nothing changes it’s just…” she sighs, heavy. “I should text Brock. I know he won’t respond, and it’s early, but I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

Sasha’s never actually told Zolf the contents of the dream. He just knows it includes Barrett and Brock and leaves Sasha scared senseless upon waking, a feeling she can’t even shake until she hears that Brock is alright. Zolf can relate; he dreams about cave-ins sometimes, and can’t get back to sleep until Feryn picks up his phone and talks him down. 

“Good idea,” he says, and Sasha reaches over, tapping the keypad a few times before setting it down. Zolf drops his hand from her shoulder as she lies down again, letting out a quiet sigh. 

“Want me to stay?” he asks, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees as he looks over at her. Sasha is playing with a loose piece of string on the bed, and doesn’t respond. It’s as much as an acceptance as anything, so Zolf stands up and stretches, making his way over to the desk chair in the corner. “Well, I’m tired and don’t want to walk far, so you’re stuck with me for at least 45 minutes.”

Sasha can’t completely hide her relieved grin at that; Zolf sits down in the chair and yawns, resting his hands behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling.

No one says anything for a minute; Sasha’s uneven breathing is the only reason he knows she’s still awake without looking. 

“I, er - thanks, mate,” Sasha whispers finally, loud in the stillness. “You - yeah.” She squeezes her eyes shut after that and Zolf just nods. This isn’t something they need to thank each other for - never has been, never will be. She turns over and buries her face into the pillow while Zolf sits there on his phone, scrolling mindlessly through it. 

He waits until her breathing evens out to become slow and steady before standing up, massaging absently at the space where his prosthetic meets his leg. “Night, Sasha,” he whispers to the room at large, carefully closing the door behind him as he heads out. 

—

It’s been a long  _ fucking  _ day. Zolf stares up at the ceiling, failing at not brooding. First, his alarm didn’t go off, so he had to run around the flat earlier this morning trying to not be late for his shift at the local hospital. And then he’d forgotten not  _ only _ his lunch, but his entire wallet (and thank the  _ gods _ for Azu, who offered to cover him today when they’d made it down to the canteen. He needs to remember to pay her back plus some tomorrow. Oh, and then his oyster card hadn’t worked on the tube ride home - he’d spent longer than he cared to fighting with the kiosk, and when he’d  _ finally _ gotten home, his leftovers had gone bad and he’d had to bin them. 

Add barely being able to sit down all day to the list of shite, and you got a very,  _ very _ cross Zolf who had zero desire to even move. He’d gotten home, grabbed a granola bar to eat, and then collapsed onto the couch, carefully taking his prosthetic off and tossing it into a corner of the room.

He’d fallen asleep on the couch soon after, and only wakes when Sasha comes in through the door late that night. 

“All right, Zolf?” she calls through the flat, kicking the door closed behind her. He cranes his neck and cracks an eye open just enough to see her carrying a few bags in, arms full. 

“Couldn’t be better,” Zolf says, dry, and Sasha gives him a mildly concerned glance. “Been a positively spiffing day. No complaints in this corner.”

“Could sound a bit more convincing, mate,” Sasha remarks, setting the bags down and coming into the room where Zolf is laying. She peers over the back of the sofa at him, frowning. “Bad day?”

“Long,” he says, short. Sasha makes a soft noise that Zolf can’t completely interpret, and then vaults over the couch, landing cross-legged next to his head. She sits there in silence for a bit, just letting him know she’s there, and eventually the frustration starts to leech out of his body and he’s just left with the exhaustion of the adrenaline. “How late is it, anyway?”

Sasha pauses, craning her neck to look at the clock on the wall. “Gone midnight, now.”

Zolf makes a noncommittal noise, reaching down to massage at the edge of his left leg. “You can go to bed, you know,” he comments, closing his eyes. 

“Er… you gonna sleep on the couch?” Sasha asks, raising an eyebrow. Zolf shrugs. 

“Leg hurts. Back hurts. Don’t wanna hop to my room, and I didn’t get the wheelchair out before laying here.” 

Sasha nods knowingly. “Did you eat anything?”

Zolf thinks back. His stomach helpfully chimes in with a growl, just in time, and he glares down at it as Sasha frowns at him and crosses her arms. “Had a granola bar when I got home.”

“Wait here,” Sasha says, and then she’s back over the couch and disappearing down the hallway to the kitchen. He can hear her mucking about in there, and it’s not long before she reappears with a takeaway container in her hands.

He sits up, back against the arm of the chair, and gratefully takes the container that Sasha hands to him. “Thanks,” he says, tucking in. It’s just some Indian they got the other night, and it’s cold all the way through but, well, Zolf’s hungry and kind of mentally done? Anyway, it tastes amazing, and he offers a few pieces to Sasha; she trades some of his rice for her chicken and they mix it all together. 

They eat in silence for a bit; the TV is playing some show that Zolf could really care less about, he’d just needed the background noise so he didn’t go  _ completely _ spare. Sasha’s fork scrapes against the plastic, and when they’re both done she grabs the containers and goes off to toss them in the bin. She comes back and leans against the back of the couch, glancing down at Zolf as he goes back into a sitting position. His back will hate him for it tomorrow, but he just doesn’t have the energy to put the prosthetic back on right now. And tomorrow’s a Saturday, he has the entire weekend to recuperate from one night on the couch. He settles in, tucking his hands behind his hands.

“Can I help you, Sasha?” he asks, not opening his eyes. 

“I can just carry you, you know,” Sasha says, casual as anything. 

Zolf can’t help it - he snorts a bit. “Sasha, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think you’re going to be able to lift me.”

“Try me,” she says, and it’s indifferent but he can hear the steel in her voice. 

“Really, I can just stay on the couch,” Zolf tries, but Sasha’s got that curve to her lip that always means that she’s not going to back down from it. She comes round the edge of the couch and crouches down in front of him. “Sasha. Really.”

“What, boss? Scared I’ll be able to, and then we’ll know which one of us is stronger?” Sasha asks, turning toward him with a frown.

He sighs. “Sasha, I just -“

“No arguments,” she says, smoothly cutting him off, and Zolf realizes he really isn’t going to win this one. He swings his legs around and wraps his arms around her neck. Sasha stands, a little unsteadily, and Zolf is lifted off the couch.

“You really are stronger than you look,” he says, a little surprised that it works, and Sasha just makes a noise that he (correctly) interprets to mean ‘told you so.’ It’s a bit of a process to get him to his room, and Sasha seems to flag a bit toward the end, grunting a bit until she’s dropping Zolf on the bed and collapsing next to him. 

“You know, we could have just gotten the wheelchair,” Zolf comments, staring up at the ceiling while Sasha catches her breath next to him. 

“Could’ve. But now you know I’m the strongest,” she says, and Zolf nods. 

“Oh, trust me, Sasha, that wasn’t in question.” He scootches up the bed as Sasha finally stands, stretching out her neck and shoulders. 

“Alright here?” she asks, and Zolf nods.

“Yeah, this - yeah.”

“Night, Zolf,” Sasha says, starting to head out the door.

“Sasha…” Zolf calls after her and she halts, turning back to look at him. “Thanks. You, er - you didn’t have to do that, but I really appreciate it, so. Yeah. Thanks.”

Sasha nods. “No problem, boss. Glad I could help.”

“Sleep well, yeah?” he says, and Sasha gives him a nod.

“You too,” she says, and then she’s gone, ducking out of the room and closing the door behind her, sending the room into darkness. Zolf lets out a quiet sigh and stares up at the ceiling. 

Sometimes, he thinks that he really doesn’t deserve Sasha, that she really shouldn’t have to put up with - well, with all his various piles of shite and trauma just kicking around, but he’s recently gotten a lot better at realizing that they’re good for each other. It’s just what they do - help support each other. They’ve been doing it for years, ever since Sasha answered the random ad he put in the local paper and they’d hit it off immediately. It’s been… gods, five years, now? And they keep supporting each other, keep somehow knowing exactly what the other needs to keep going, even if there had been missteps at the beginning.

Zolf’s trying not to constantly think about what he does and doesn’t deserve; his therapist says that it’s counterproductive, and on his good days he knows that he and Sasha were lucky to find each other. If platonic soulmates exist, the two of them are  _ it _ . Zolf wouldn’t trade it for anything, either, not when they click so easily. Two slightly awkward roommates who  _ get  _ the other person’s awkwardness… hell, Zolf doesn’t know anyone else who gets on as well as they do. 

It’s super late, so he cuts the introspection off early and turns over, pulling the blankets up to his chin. Yeah, he’s lucky to have Sasha, and she’s lucky to have him. And he’s starting to believe it, more than ever, now. Maybe one day he’ll unequivocally believe it, but for now it’s enough that he has someone like Sasha here for him, someone he can be there for. 

It’s nice, having that. 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments (as always) are SUPER appreciated !!


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